Summer heats up for Highland Lakes youth at fire camp
Marble Falls Middle School eighth-grade student Brianna Watts douses a fire with the help of Marble Falls Fire Rescue firefighter Ken Schwake on the final day of Fire Camp for Kids on June 14 at Shifflett Ranch. Also pictured is eigth-grade student Lane Travis (background). Staff photo by Connie Swinney
CONNIE SWINNEY • PICAYUNE STAFF
MARBLE FALLS — Dousing the flames of a burning car made Kevin Carpenter think twice about what he wants to be when he grows up.
“I can see how it can be a dangerous job and how you can get hurt very easily, but it looks like a fun process,” said Carpenter, a participant in the Fire Camp for Kids, which occurred the second week in June. “I’ve been thinking about going into the medical field, and now I kind of think I might want to go into this.”
Carpenter was one of a dozen Marble Falls Middle School incoming eighth-grade students in the weeklong camp at the Marble Falls Fire Rescue facility and a city-leased pasture on Shifflett Ranch.
“We’re trying to enlighten them,” Marble Falls Fire Rescue firefighter Ken Schwake said. “We’re trying to reach out to the students in the community and give them a chance to see what fire service is like.”
The program includes instruction and hands-on demonstrations on cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and wound treatment as well as summer, fire and lake safety.
Other agencies who participated in the program were Marble Falls Area EMS and Marble Falls Air Evac EMS.
“A lot of these kids have lived here all their lives,” Schwake said. “They see this as a community, where they want to help out and contribute back where they grew up.”
The camp’s highlights culminated with the final day on Shifflet Ranch during which teams of campers took several turns dousing a burning car using a fire hose.
“Putting out the fire was pretty easy, but trying to move towards the fire was very intense,” Carpenter said. “You could feel the heat burning against your body. It felt really, really hot. You felt very close up to the action. It felt unreal.”
connie@thepicayune.com